After the United States Congress passed the Water Pollution Control Act of 1948, biologists played an increasingly significant role in scientific studies of water pollution. Biologists interacted with other experts, notably engineers, who managed the public agencies devoted to water pollution control. Although biologists were at first marginalized within these agencies, the situation began to change by the early 1960s. Biological data became an integral part of water pollution control. (...) While changing societal values, stimulated by an emerging ecological awareness, may explain broader shifts in expert opinion during the 1960s, this article explores how graphs changed experts’ perceptions of water pollution. Experts communicated with each other via reports, journal articles, and conference speeches. Those sources reveal that biologists began experimenting with new graphical methods to simplify the complex ecological data they collected from the field. Biologists, I argue, followed the engineers’ lead by developing graphical methods that were concise and quantitative. Their need to collaborate with engineers forced them to communicate, negotiate, and overcome conflicts and misunderstandings. By meeting engineers’ expectations and promoting the value of their data through images as much as words, biologists asserted their authority within water pollution control by the early 1960s. (shrink)

The United States Environmental Protection Agency has begun to encourage innovative market-based approaches to address nonpoint source water pollution. These water quality trading programs have the potential to achieve environmental standards at a lower overall cost. Two fundamental questions must be answered before these benefits can be realized: How will trades between point and nonpoint sources be monitored and enforced? and, How will nonpoint sources be included within a trading market? ;Point-nonpoint source trading can be accommodated through (...) either a technology-based or performance-based approach. The technology-based approach accommodates trading through the use of a proxy for unobservable, individual nonpoint source emission reductions. While trading ratios can effectively deal with the uncertainty associated with using a proxy for actual abatement, they are inefficient and ineffective for dealing with problems of hidden action. The alternative use of performance-based trading approaches requires the use of team contracts that provide individual incentives linked to the performance of the entire group. Such contracts must be designed to overcome both adverse selection and moral hazard problems. Performance-based approaches promise efficiency gains in terms of reducing the problems of asymmetric information, and by introducing flexibility into the choice of nonpoint source abatement technologies and practices. ;Nonpoint sources are exempted from direct regulation under the polluter-pays-principle. As a result, their participation in trading markets is voluntary, thus preventing a baseline cap on pre-trade emissions. To determine whether this arrangement should be changed, we must ask if there something that morally prohibits the direct regulation of nonpoint sources of pollution. While a morally relevant distinction can be made between point and nonpoint sources of emission based on differences in the ability to observe individual emission levels, this relevance is limited to the case of performance-based policy instruments. The moral legitimacy of applying the polluter-pays-principle to nonpoint sources of pollution must be made on a case by case basis, as it is dependent upon existing social, economic, and other practical factors. However, it can be stated that there is no general moral barrier to prohibit the application of the polluter-pays-principle to nonpoint sources of pollution. (shrink)

In the early 1970s, the idea of precaution—of heeding rather than ignoring scientific evidence of harm when there is uncertainty, and taking action that errs on the side of safety—was so appealing that the US Congress used it as the basis of the toxics provisions of the Clean Water Act of 1972, the federal Environmental Protection Agency based its proposals for implementing those provisions on it, and the courts frequently tended toward it when resolving conflicts over the implementation of (...) pollution control law. In other words, precaution was written into toxic water pollutant control law and was beginning to be written into policy and regulations. By 1976, the tables were completely turned. The EPA abandoned the safety-providing approach in the implementation of the law, even though the law required it, and adopted a risk-taking approach in the creation of standards for the vast majority of toxic water pollutants. The article examines how this change was brought about. It builds on recent work on undone science as an obstacle to regulation and contributes to the development of an account of the creation of the regulatory system, with both its achievements and its limitations. (shrink)

The Internet of Things is an emerging information industry. Applying the information collection, transmission, and processing technologies in the Internet of Things technology to environmental monitoring, environmental emergency, and other environmental protection supervision fields will greatly improve the speed and accuracy of environmental supervision and facilitate the scientific development of environmental protection. Through the Internet of Things, people can obtain a large amount of reliable real-time information, and it is not easy to be affected by time, place, and environment, while (...) the wireless sensor network has the advantages of easy installation and low cost, so environmental monitoring through the Internet of Things is the future development trend. In this paper, in view of the current situation of water scarcity and serious water pollution in China, combined with the development trend and advantages of the Internet of Things, and based on the inadequacy of the existing microbial sensor data collection equipment, we propose a design scheme of microbial concentration monitoring system for waters based on IoT. The system is based on Zig Bee wireless sensor network to build a common data acquisition platform and design special hardware to carry out high-precision microbial sensor data acquisition in water and through the PC to complete the real-time measurement data storage, waveform display, and data processing. In this paper, the schematic diagram and PCB board design of the system hardware module NUC120 main control board, CC2530 RF board, Wi-Fi wireless communication module, and high-precision ADC acquisition module are completed and fabricated. Then, the four modules are combined to realize the development of the data aggregation node and data acquisition node of the dedicated Zig Bee wireless network hardware device. (shrink)

Climate Liberalism examines the potential and limitations of classical-liberal approaches to pollution control and climate change. Some successful environmental strategies, such as the use of catch-shares for fisheries, instream water rights, and tradable emission permits, draw heavily upon the classical liberal intellectual tradition and its emphasis on property rights and competitive markets. This intellectual tradition has been less helpful, to date, in the development or design of climate change policies. Climate Liberalism aims to help fill the gap (...) in the academic literature examining the extent to which classical-liberal principles, including an emphasis on property rights, decentralized authority and dynamic markets, can inform the debate over climate-change policies. The contributors in this book approach the topic from a range of perspectives and represent multiple academic disciplines. Chapters consider the role of property rights and common-law legal systems in controlling pollution, the extent to which competitive markets backed by legal rules encourage risk minimization and adaptation, and how to identify the sorts of policy interventions that may help address climate change in ways that are consistent with liberal values. (shrink)

Research and activism have increasingly denounced the problematic environmental record of the infrastructure and value chain underpinning artificial intelligence (AI). Water-intensive data centres, polluting mineral extraction and e-waste dumping are incontrovertibly part of AI’s footprint. In this article, I turn to areas affected by AI-fuelled environmental harm and identify an ethics of resistance emerging from local activists, which I term ‘elemental ethics’. Elemental ethics interrogates the AI value chain’s problematic relationship with the elements that make up the world, critiques (...) the undermining of local and ancestral approaches to nature and reveals the vital and quotidian harms engendered by so-called intelligent systems. While this ethics is emerging from grassroots and Indigenous groups, it echoes recent calls from environmental philosophy to reconnect with the environment via the elements. In empirical terms, this article looks at groups in Chile resisting a Google data centre project in Santiago and lithium extraction (used for rechargeable batteries) in Lickan Antay Indigenous territory, Atacama Desert. As I show, elemental ethics can complement top-down, utilitarian and quantitative approaches to AI ethics and sustainable AI as well as interrogate whose lived experience and well-being counts in debates on AI extinction. (shrink)

Water quality control helps in the estimation of water bodies and detects the span of pollutants and their effect on the neighboring environment. This is why the water quality of the northern part of Lake Manzala has been studied here from January to March, 2016. This study aims to model and create a program for linear and nonlinear regression of the water elements in Lake Manzala to assess and predict the water quality. Water (...) samples have been extracted from various depths, and physio-chemical properties and heavy metal concentrations have been evaluated. This study has proposed a new algorithm for predicting water quality called “Algorithm of Estimation Regression Model”. On the contrary, in renewable energy applications, statistical modeling and forecasting the solar radiation remains a significant issue with detect to reinforce power management. A new proposed method for forecasting the average Monthly Global Solar Energy in Queensland, Australia, is called, Converting Data Set into Markov Model. It was used to obtain Markov transition probability matrices for three and six states of the solar energy. The proposed forecasting method yielded accurate results with minimal error. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Introduction:Beyond Nature/Culture Dualism: Let's Try Co-Evolution Instead of "Control"Ronnie Hawkins (bio)In the original call for papers for this special issue, nature/culture dualism was characterized as a way of thinking that holds human culture and nonhuman nature to be radically different ontological spheres, hyperseparated and oppositional, or, as Val Plumwood maintains in her essay, an orientation that assumes "separate casts of characters in separate dramas." In the human sphere, (...) individuals are unique and their lives are precious (at least theoretically), with concerns understood "from the inside," in terms of experience, intention and agency. In the sphere of nature, on the other hand, nonhuman beings are seen "from the outside," at best as replaceable members of species or populations needed for ecosystem functioning and, at worst, as unagentive, thinglike objects open for unbridled human exploitation. With our vast information and communication systems now largely in place, however, our human "noösphere" is rapidly enlarging to place us firmly within the biosphere (which, of course, in the imagery of Venn diagrams, must make up the larger circle on the screen), illuminating "both casts in both dramas," or perhaps joining all actors on the stage in a many-act, multidimensional play, the denoument of which, whether or not the extant lifeforms on this [End Page 1] planet will continue to evolve, remains as yet unwritten. The five essays in this collection speak to these points, and together they develop an alternative vision to our present dualistic impasse, seeing multiple natural agencies engaged with humanity in ongoing co-evolution and, as Freya Mathews suggests, raising the hope for a synergistic restructuring of lifeways that may yet save us from anthropogenic catastrophe.In "The Culture of Nature As Seen Through Mississippian Geographies," Jeff Baldwin shows us the broad scope of interacting agents, human and nonhuman, biological and geological, in what he terms "the nature-culture of the Mississippi River," as highlighted by the recent devastation of human habitation along the Gulf Coast of the United States wrought by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. By enacting a role in which we "believe [our]selves to rule over a mechanistic world," we humans have, over the last century or so, stemmed the natural flooding of the Mississippi, rerouting the sediments that maintained and extended the delta, funneling them into the sea and thereby bringing about the subsidence and erosion of hundreds of square miles of coastal land. Concomitantly, we have let agricultural runoff from the huge Mississippi drainage basin eject excess nutrients into the Gulf of Mexico, stimulating algal blooms and die-offs, depleting the water of oxygen so as to create a hypoxic "dead zone" that is now the size of Massachusetts, and (though Baldwin does not discuss this aspect of the problem) we have released enough petrochemical pollution in the area to have earned the lower reaches of the River the name "Cancer Alley" decades ago. A failure to grasp the import of these large anthropogenic effects is, sadly, evident in calls for rebuilding the New Orleans area according to the same mechanistic model that has already proven so inadequate. Baldwin observes that the earth changes wrought through human cultural innovation often occur so rapidly, or have their negative feedbacks technologically so displaced through time and space, that their eventual impacts on the larger system may initially go unappreciated. His vision of "the culture of nature," however, is ultimately an optimistic one, since his functional understanding of culture is that it ultimately works toward mutualism, promoting increasingly appropriate relationships among all interacting components, and he finds evidence of a growing effort to establish an "intentional co-evolution," a conscious alignment of human projects with the ongoing projects of a living nature that encompasses them. [End Page 2]If Baldwin's essay helps us see our human activities "from the outside"—not just "from within" prevailing human culture, where they seem taken-for-granted necessities given a certain form of social construction, but as they alternatively appear inside biospherical space, often as inappropriate, exploitative interferences and intrusions—Stacey Sowards' essay, "Identification Through Orangutans: Destabilizing the Nature/Culture Dualism," explores the potential for our connecting with nonhuman life "from the inside," relating... (shrink)

All farmers have their own version of what it means to be a good farmer. For many US farmers a large portion of their identity is defined by the high input, high output production systems they manage to produce food, fiber or fuel. However, the unintended consequences of highly productivist systems are often increased soil erosion and the pollution of ground and surface water. A large number of farmers have conservationist identities within their good farmer identity, however their (...) conservation goals often need to be activated to rebalance the production-conservation meanings they give to their roles in society. In this paper we analyze US Cornbelt farmer interviews and surveys to trace how the performance-based environmental management process can be used to influence the farmer social identity and shift the overall good farmer identity towards a stronger conservationist standard. We find the continuous feedback loop in performance-based environmental management mimics the hierarchically organized feedback control processes of identity verification and can be used to help farmers activate their conservationist farmer identities at the person, role, and social levels to establish new norms for the practice of more sustainable agriculture. (shrink)

This paper examines structural barriers to the adoption of climate change mitigation practices and the evolution of a climate change ethic among American farmers. It examines how seed corn contracts in Michigan constrain the choices of farmers and allow farmers to rationalize the over-application of fertilizer and associated water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Seed corn contracts use a competitive “tournament” system where farmers are rewarded for maximizing yields. Interviews and a focus group were used to understand fertilizer (...) over-application and barriers to participating in a climate change mitigation program. Results indicate that farmers agree that they over-apply fertilizer but would be unlikely to participate in a mitigation program due to their contracts and lack of support from seed corn companies. Because only a few companies control access to the seed corn market, farmers feel they have few choices. Farmers rationalized their practices as their only option given the competitive nature of their contracts and blamed other sources of pollution. Despite increasing efforts to educate farmers about climate change, structural barriers will continue to constrain participation in mitigation efforts and the development of a climate change ethic. (shrink)

Although contemporary methods of environmental regulation have registered some significant accomplishments, the current system of environmental law is not working well enough. First the good news: Since the first Earth Day in 1970, smog has decreased in the United States by thirty percent. The number of lakes and rivers safe for fishing and swimming has increased by one-third. Recycling has begun to reduce levels of municipal waste. Ocean dumping has been curtailed. Forests have begun to expand. One success story is (...) the virtual elimination of airborne lead in the United States. Another is the rapid phase-out of ozone-layer depleting chemicals worldwide. Nevertheless, prominent commentators of diverse political persuasions agree in an assessment that conventional models of environmental law have “failed.” Many environmental problems remain unsolved: species extinction, global desertification and deforestation, possible global climate change, and continuing severe air and water pollution in urban areas and poor countries. What is more, successful environmental protection has come only at enormous economic cost. By the year 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the United States will spend approximately two percent of its gross national product on environmental pollution control. Academic economists have pointed out the nonsensical inefficiency of many environmental regulations, but usually to no avail. (shrink)

Modern industrial societies have achieved a level of economic prosperity undreamed of in earlier times, but in the view of the contemporary environmental movement, the prosperity has come at the cost of serious degradations to the natural world. For environmental advocates, problems such as resource depletion, air and water pollution, global warming and the loss of biodiversity represent due threats to the well-being of human societies and the planet itself. But just how serious are these threats and how (...) should we go about confronting them? Do environmental problems call for more extensive government controls over industrial activity, energy policy and the like, or is it possible to find solutions by harnessing the incentives of the free market? The essays in this collection address these questions and explore related issues. (shrink)

This short piece of communication has the sole purpose of identifying some evidence, supporting our view regarding a possible missing environment-nurturing cultural value. Here, we attempt to examine the presence of cultural studies within the boundary of water pollution research.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:240 Feminist Studies 45, no. 1. © 2019 by Mary Anna Evans Mary Anna Evans Personal Continuum The scent of gasoline is neither attractive nor repulsive. It falls somewhere on the continuum between. It is medicinal, but without the acrid bitterness of medicine. It draws children like a drug, but only when their parents aren’t hovering to warn of danger. Adults know about fire and poisoning and long-range carcinogenic (...) doom. Children only know that the odor around gas pumps smells naughty and fun, until their lips open and the flavor of petroleum turns their stomachs. Why do some things smell so much better than they taste? Gasoline, unlike honey, draws humans but not flies. Sarah was not thinking of fire, poisoning, or doom when she fitted the long metal nozzle into the mouth of her car’s fuel tank. She was trying not to think at all, though the customary thoughts slipped in. None of them were about gasoline. The pump’s air pollution control system was working well but not perfectly, so it took a moment for the odor to reach her nose. Her body roused and snarled at her. The baby. What are you thinking? If you breathe those fumes, what will they do to the baby? A moment passed while her body checked itself, remembering what it already knew. There was no baby. Where is the baby? Mary Anna Evans 241 The frantic voice didn’t echo between her ears. It had nothing to do with her brain at all. It was more than thought. It came from a place deeper than thought, and it wasn’t hers. Her body said things she didn’t want to say, and it needed things she didn’t need. Her body wanted things that were not good for her. Again, Where is the baby? And then, the darker question. What did you do? “Nothing,” she said aloud, since there was no one to hear. I didn’t do anything but bleed. I’m still bleeding. She resisted the instinct to clap her hands over her ears to shut out the voice that couldn’t be shut out. Her defiant hold on the nozzle kept her upright. She listened to the rhythmic throb of the pump. Refusing to turn her face from the gasoline’s stench, she opened her mouth and let the fumes seep in. * * * “Hello, sweetheart,” Frederick said as he came in the door. His peck on the cheek didn’t linger, so Sarah knew there would be no more expressions of affection that day. He had read in a self-help book that it was important for couples to use terms of endearment as a form of bonding. Physical displays of affection were important, too, or so said the self-affirmed relationship expert who wrote the book. In public, displays of affection affirmed the pair bond. In private, even a quick smooch forced men and women to secrete an attachment chemical called oxy-whatever. Oh, hell. She was a chemist. She knew what oxytocin was. She was just mystified by the notion of reading a book to find out how to get some. He turned away and went into the kitchen to fetch the marinating chicken. He always grilled when it was his night to cook. She had come to wonder whether modern men were drawn to cook with fire by an ageold hunter instinct, or whether they were attracted to an activity that put a well-insulated exterior wall between them and the women who remained inside to toss the salads. All across America, every warm summer night, lonely women toss salads and hope for romance. His head poked in the back door. “I bought slivered almonds and croutons.” 242 Mary Anna Evans Her “Thanks for remembering, sweetheart,” bounced off the closing door. Shit. She could have spared herself that soulless term of endearment. Leaving the lettuce in the refrigerator, she thrust her soapy hands under warm running water, because even thinking the word “shit” made the idea of handling raw food appalling. Her body, which had forgotten again that she’d lost the baby, approved of her caution. She guarded her thoughts against disturbing its... (shrink)

The rainwater system is an important part of the urban infrastructure as well as a key hub for maintaining the dynamic operation of the city and a clear indicator of the level of urban development. With the rapid development of urbanization, the hardened area of roads and residential areas has increased, and the construction of rainwater systems is so far insufficient, causing the urban waterlogging and water pollution problems to become increasingly serious. Accordingly, combined with the “sponge city” (...) construction concept of the six-character policy of “seepage, retention, storage, use, purification, and drainage,” we propose to adopt measures for the local conditions and to reasonably select sponge city engineering measures to increase rainwater utilization, effectively reduce rainwater runoff, and alleviate the city waterlogging and water pollution problems. We used the analytic hierarchy process to evaluate the effect of a sponge city “pocket park” rainwater system in Chaohu City before and after the transformation. The results showed that the pocket park after the renovation was well controlled, the waterlogging was basically eliminated, the water quality pollution was clearly improved, and the ecological environment was significantly improved. (shrink)

The river Portoviejo crosses four cantons of the province of Manabí and is the main source of water for the inhabitants of the area to be used in various uses. The objective of this bibliographic review article is to carry out a historical analysis of the water pollution of the Portoviejo River. The qualitative and descriptive documentary research methodology was used. The authors conclude that the factors that influence the pollution of the Portoviejo River are the (...) constant direct discharges of wastewater and solid waste along its route by the residents of the area and the contribution of the water treatment plant waste from the area. (shrink)

In recent years, the problem of environmental pollution has become more and more serious, and environmental pollution has become a topic of concern. PM2.5, PM10, hazy weather, and other words about environmental pollution have become hot words and topics for the media and the public to talk about, and environmental pollution control is called for by the media and the public. This reflects the rapid development of economy and the obvious changes in people’s living standards, (...) and people have higher requirements and aspirations for their lives and the environment they live in, and their awareness of environmental protection is getting stronger and stronger; however, it also reflects that the rapid development of the economy comes at the cost of damaging the environment. This paper analyzes the current situation and governance dilemma of rural environment by means of field research from dynamic portfolio evaluation theory, explains the problems and causes of environmental pollution management under the requirement of polycentric governance, and proposes countermeasures to solve the problem of environmental pollution management in county. The paper aims to analyze the current state of environmental pollution in rural areas through literature review, villagers’ field interviews, and field research and to explain the application of polycentric governance to rural environmental pollution management in county in the region. (shrink)

What limits ought there be on a state’s ability to create a homogeneous society, to increase or perpetuate non-diversity, or to create hierarchies within existing diversity? This article examines those questions with reference to the Lieberman Plan—which proposes to transfer populated territories from Israel to the Palestine in exchange for Jewish settlements on the West Bank— as an abstract exercise in demographic transformation by the state. First the article considers if the Lieberman plan would “work”: Would it create the alterations (...) it proposes, and would those changes achieve a stable, peaceful, perhaps even just settlement? It finds that though there is debate about the range of effect, there is little doubt that transfer would alter the state’s demography. It then turns to the international standards that might govern the transfer of territory and the denaturalization of citizens, to see how they would characterize such a plan. It finds that comparisons to ethnic cleansing are inapposite, and that norms protecting citizenship are considerably more complex than they first appear—even allowing ethnically targeted denaturalization in some cases. The article then analyzes the loyalty provisions of the Lieberman Plan, and notes that, contrary to the usual normative assumption that citizenship is tied to the state, the foundations of citizenship are actually a habitual or formative link to a given territory, which in turn creates a right to citizenship not in any particular state, but in the one that incidentally is sovereign over that territory. This interaction of citizenship and territory, when considered together with norms requiring equal protection for all citizens, suggests that the polity has an interest in defining its own territorial scope, and thereby its membership. The legal regime is ambiguous, and therefore deliberations about this question are in the realm of politics. The article demonstrates how transfer’s assimilation to existing norms suggests a novel interpretation of selfdetermination with far-reaching consequences for both sides of the conflict. Finally, the article notes that international law, though it polices excesses, is largely silent on the principal determinant of demography: the fact of state control over territory. (shrink)

Tirana, immediately after it was declared the capital of Albania on 11 February 1920, has undergone many changes in its morphology and city context. The capital is located in the heart of the country. During its lifespan, Tirana has adopted four important regulatory plans starting from 1923. The Western ideologies of the time influenced drastically the city development. The influence of such ideologies was stopped immediately though the imposition of communist ideas, after the Second World War. Rational building forms were (...) created which could be standardized in order to reduce construction costs. Meanwhile, in Western Europe, this current was implemented during the 1920s, as a response to social problems. The communist regime established strict anti-urbanization policy that aims to foster the development of rural areas and the suburban industrial districts in order to control urban growth and demographic mobility. All the regulatory master plans of Tirana, climate data of the city, the actual situation of the specific neighborhood, its orientation toward north, are considered in order to gather information and to implement the correct bioclimatic eco-renovation in the area. A special attention will be given to the underground tunnels which were constructed during the communist regime all over the city (1945–1983) as a response to a hypothetic nuclear attack, in order to shelter the inhabitance against bombing. These reinforced concrete tunnels will serve not only as an area for water collection and recycling strategies but also for cooling with zero energy expenditure for the inhabitants as a consequence of differences in temperature and air pressure. This strategy benefits from the underground air temperature in both seasons (winter and summer). It envisages the handover of these tunnels by the community. Nowadays, such structures are abandoned and denigrated. The realization of these structures required large amounts of money from the state budget. Considering that fact they need to be vitalized and reused, using different methodologies and strategies as part of the city. After the communist regime in the city of Tirana, two other regulatory plans were implemented which observe the city from another perspective, determining and evaluating Tirana’s real values as a city of the future, but not defining yet Tirana as an Ecocity. The ecological potential of Tirana including its outskirts is to be considered. Its flora and fauna are very rich, containing a mixt of species and plants. Regardless, the city of Tirana is suffering from different kinds of pollution such as air and noise pollution which are above EU and WHO norms. Tirana benefits from a Temperate Mediterranean climate. Furthermore, the benefits of the solar radiation are enormous. Unfortunately, nowadays, the city of Tirana is not profiting much from it. This chapter is in search of an overall view of the city of Tirana, and its great potential discovering its underground and upper ground historical secrets. (shrink)

Leading philosophical accounts presume that Thomas H. Morgan’s transmission theory can be understood independently of experimental practices. Experimentation is taken to be relevant to confirming, rather than interpreting, the transmission theory. But the construction of Morgan’s theory went hand in hand with the reconstruction of the chief experimental object, the model organism Drosophila melanogaster . This raises an important question: when a theory is constructed to account for phenomena in carefully controlled laboratory settings, what knowledge, if any, indicates the theory’s (...) relevance to phenomena outside highly controlled settings? The answer, I argue, is found within the procedural knowledge embedded within laboratory practice. †To contact the author, please write to: Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Minnesota, Department of Philosophy, 831 Heller Hall, 271 19th Ave., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455‐0310; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

This paper makes a contribution to ongoing debates about whether and how we can empirically assess the potential, limitations, and actual impacts of public-private partnerships in developing countries. Several United Nations and bilateral aid agencies have called for the development of impact assessment methodologies that can help clarify when, how, where, and for whom partnerships work. This paper scrutinizes some of the key assumptions underlying this debate, arguing that no objective ' truth' about the effects of PPPs can be discovered (...) through the use of such methodologies. The paper then investigates what can actually be known about a PPP's effects by testing a PPP IA framework that is recommended by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This is done using a case study from Pakistan. The paper shows that IA methodology may provide an indication of how well a PPP has fared, but not why the PPP has turned out the way it has. At the same time, win-win and win-lose outcomes may exist simultaneously, even for the same stakeholder in the PPP. While the importance of ensuring proper design, monitoring, and IA of PPPs cannot be denied, their effects must be seen as an outcome of struggles between a variety of actors over the distribution of social and environmental hazards associated with broader processes of economic development and industrialization. (shrink)

This target article discusses the verbal working memory system used in sentence comprehension. We review the concept of working memory as a short-duration system in which small amounts of information are simultaneously stored and manipulated in the service of accomplishing a task. We summarize the argument that syntactic processing in sentence comprehension requires such a storage and computational system. We then ask whether the working memory system used in syntactic processing is the same as that used in verbally mediated tasks (...) that involve conscious controlled processing. Evidence is brought to bear from various sources: the relationship between individual differences in working memory and individual differences in the efficiency of syntactic processing; the effect of concurrent verbal memory load on syntactic processing; and syntactic processing in patients with poor short-term memory, patients with poor working memory, and patients with aphasia. Experimental results from these normal subjects and patients with various brain lesions converge on the conclusion that there is a specialization in the verbal working memory system for assigning the syntactic structure of a sentence and using that structure in determining sentence meaning that is separate from the working memory system underlying the use of sentence meaning to accomplish other functions. We present a theory of the divisions of the verbal working memory system and suggestions regarding its neural basis. (shrink)

A questionnaire on the attitudes towards the functions of research ethical committees was sent to members of selected research ethical committees in Wessex and some controls. Almost all respondents felt there was a need for ethical review of research projects; 42 per cent thought there was a need for some training before joining a committee; 67 per cent thought the system could be improved and 47 per cent thought that monitoring or follow-up procedures should be adopted. Ethical committees were thought (...) to be purely advisory, as opposed to mandatory, by 33 per cent, and 63 per cent thought they should restrict their review to ethical problems as opposed to scientific or design problems. Views about the function of non-medical members ranged from 'none at all' to 'very important'. Of the 10 controls who were asked whether they would become a member of an ethical committee if asked, seven said that on balance they would and the reasons stated varied from the view that it was a 'very important committee' to the feeling that it was 'a necessary but irksome job'. (shrink)

River conservation is rooted in the importance of managing watersheds (D.A.S.) in Indonesia, with 42,210 watersheds forming the basis for management policies. To ensure ecosystem sustainability, these policies consider various aspects such as land conditions, water quality, and regional land use. However, the reality on the ground shows that rapid urbanization and a lack of public awareness have led to river pollution and damage to riverbanks. Therefore, more robust conservation efforts are required to achieve environmental justice. This research (...) employs a normative juridical method and focuses on the Cirebon area. The findings reveal that implementing urban river conservation policies in Cirebon includes controlling illegal construction, conducting community outreach on the importance of river protection, and executing environmental rehabilitation programs to raise awareness of the negative impacts of unauthorized development. Despite progress in data collection and action planning, challenges such as community resistance and budget constraints continue to hinder the effectiveness of policy implementation. Collaboration between the Government, communities, and other stakeholders is essential to ensure the success of these conservation efforts. (shrink)

The author of the article describes globalization processes as inevitable historic and objective phenomena, the driving force of society’s development and progress. It is emphasized that these processes result in harmful effects of global character on the environment and society. In the opinion of the author, one of the most important negative effects of globalization is the increase in environmental pollution which in turn results in the change of climate, extreme ecological situations, and threats to the natural environment and (...) human health. The author argues that one of the main legal instruments for limiting and neutralizing the harmful effect of pollution on the environment and society is the integrated system of environmental legal regulation. The author considers the safeguarding of the environmental objects and resources (climate atmosphere, soil and subsoil, water, air, biologic diversity, etc.) as the object of the legal regulation of the integrated environmental protection. What is more, the author of the article analyzes certain problematic aspects related to climate change and integrated prevention and control of climate pollution which are regulated under the new integrated institute of environmental protection under the environmental protection law. The author compares the provisions of international agreements, the European Union and Lithuanian legislation regarding these relations and concludes that Lithuania has not fully met its international obligations in this field. (shrink)

Focusing on the recent explosion in the use of bottled water, this article—originally written for my NASTS conference presentation—will examine the rhetoric used by the bottled water industry and home purification system providers to affect the public’s idea of clean, pure, dirty, and polluted water. Bottlers argue that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) provides better regulation of bottled water than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could ever do for tap water, though the EPA and (...) the FDA use basically the same set of guidelines. The EPA and FDA definitions in terms of concentrations of specific substances are very different from the ideas of muddy or “dirty” water. This article will examine the impact of the public’s perception of good drinking water and the perception that if it is off the shelf, it is cleaner and tastier. (shrink)

The rationale for pesticide use in agriculture is that costs associated with pesticide pollution are to be justified by its benefits, but this is not so obvious. Valuing the benefits by simple economic analysis has increased pesticide use in agriculture and consequently produced pesticide-induced “public ills.” This paper attempts to explore the research gaps of the economic and social consequences of pesticide use in developing countries, particularly with an example of Nepal. We argue that although the negative sides of (...) agricultural development, for example- soil, water, and air pollution; pest resistance and resurgence; bioaccumulation, bio-magnification; and loss of biodiversity and ecosystem resilience caused by the use of pesticides in agriculture, are “developmental problems” and are “unintentional,” the magnitude may be increased by undervaluing the problems in the analysis of its economic returns. Despite continuous effort for holistic system analyses for studying complex phenomena like pesticides impacts, the development within the academic science has proceeded in the opposite direction that might have accelerated marginalization of the third world subsistence agricultural communities. We hypothesize that, if these adversities are realized and accounted for, the benefits from the current use of pesticides could be outweighed by the costs of pollution and ill human health. This paper also illustrates different pathways and mechanisms for marginalization. In view of potential and overall negative impacts of pesticide use, we recommend alternative ways of controlling pests such as community integrated pest management (IPM) along with education and training activities. Such measures are likely to reduce the health and environmental costs of pesticide pollution, and also enhance the capabilities of third world agricultural communities in terms of knowledge, decision making, innovation, and policy change. (shrink)

Phototoxicity frequently occurs during live fluorescence microscopy, and its consequences are often underestimated. Damage to cellular macromolecules upon excitation light illumination can impair sample physiology, and even lead to sample death. In this review, we explain how phototoxicity influences live samples, and we highlight that, besides the obvious effects of phototoxicity, there are often subtler consequences of illumination that are imperceptible when only the morphology of samples is examined. Such less apparent manifestations of phototoxicity are equally problematic, and can change (...) the conclusions drawn from an experiment. Thus, limiting phototoxicity is a prerequisite for obtaining reproducible quantitative data on biological processes. We present strategies to reduce phototoxicity, e.g. limiting the illumination to the focal plane and suggest controls for phototoxicity effects. Overall, we argue that phototoxicity needs increased attention from researchers when designing experiments, and when evaluating research findings. (shrink)

Begining from the Paleolithic Period cultures, the Danube has hosted a society and a state. The Danube river, which is the source of life for the states living in the Danube basin, has become more strategic with the growth and spread of the states and has become the key to existence in these lands. The Danube, which was used only for drinking water and agricultural irrigation in the Middle Ages, has become the main tool of trade in time. It (...) has been replaced by modern boats, starting with the transportation made by backing up from the shore with horse-drawn carriages over the Danube. The process of sharing dominance in the waterway has been the main target in the management of the Danube. It is possible to evaluate the process of managing the navigation in the Danube in four periods. The first period is the period of bilateral agreements between 1792 and before; the second term, the commission period, which started with the Paris Peace Conference of 1856 and continued between the 1920s and the First World War, which was planned for a short time but whose mandate was extended several times; the third period, efforts to internationalize the Danube from 1920 to the Second World War; the fourth period is the internationalization process of the Danube. However, there is no legal document in which the Danube states, which have agreed for the management of navigation for centuries, have made an agreement on the prevention, control and disposal of ship-borne pollution. (shrink)

In this article, we argue that the scope of bioethical debate concerning justice in health should expand beyond the topic of access to health care and cover such issues as occupational hazards, safe housing, air pollution, water quality, food and drug safety, pest control, public health, childhood nutrition, disaster preparedness, literacy, and many other environmental factors that can cause differences in health. Since society does not have sufficient resources to address all of these environmental factors at one (...) time, it is important to set priorities for bioethical theorizing and policy formation. Two considerations should be used to set these priorities: (1) the impact of the environmental factor on health inequality, and (2) the practicality of addressing the factor. (shrink)

Background: There is evidence that household point-of-use water treatment products can reduce the enormous burden of water-borne illness. Nevertheless, adoption among the global poor is very low, and little evidence exists on why. Methods: We gave 600 households in poor communities in Dhaka, Bangladesh randomly-ordered two-month free trials of four water treatment products: dilute liquid chlorine, sodium dichloroisocyanurate tablets, a combined flocculant-disinfectant powdered mixture, and a silver-coated ceramic siphon filter. Consumers also received education on the dangers of (...) untreated drinking water. We measured which products consumers used with self-reports, observation, and chlorine tests. We also measured drinking water's contamination with E. coli. Findings: Households reported highest usage of the filter, although no product had even 30% usage. E. coli concentrations in stored drinking water were generally lowest when households had Water Guard. Households that self-reported product usage had large reductions in E. coli concentrations with any product as compared to controls. Conclusion: Traditional arguments for the low adoption of POU products focus on affordability, consumers' lack of information about germs and the dangers of unsafe water, and specific products not meshing with a household's preferences. In this study we provided free trials, repeated informational messages explaining the dangers of untreated water, and a variety of product designs. The low usage of all products despite such efforts makes clear that important barriers exist beyond cost, information, and variation among these four product designs. Without a better understanding of the choices and aspirations of the target end-users, household-based water treatment is unlikely to reduce morbidity and mortality substantially in urban Bangladesh and similar populations. © 2011 Luoto et al. (shrink)

Human consumption of pharmaceuticals often leads to environmental release of residues via urine and faeces, creating environmental and public health risks. Policy responses must consider the normative question how responsibilities for managing such risks, and costs and burdens associated with that management, should be distributed between actors. Recently, the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP) has been advanced as rationale for such distribution. While recognizing some advantages of PPP, we highlight important ethical and practical limitations with applying it in this context: PPP (...) gives ambiguous and arbitrary guidance due to difficulties in identifying the salient polluter. Moreover, when PPP does identify responsible actors, these may be unable to avoid or mitigate their contribution to the pollution, only able to avoid/mitigate it at excessive cost to themselves or others, or excusably ignorant of contributing. These limitations motivate a hybrid framework where PPP, which emphasizes holding those causing large-scale problems accountable, is balanced by the Ability to Pay Principle (APP), which emphasizes efficiently managing such problems. In this framework, improving wastewater treatment and distributing associated financial costs across water consumers or taxpayers stand out as promising responses to pharmaceutical pollution from human use. However, sound policy depends on empirical considerations requiring further study. (shrink)

Water is the major contributor to the eating and keeping qualities and structure of baked products. Its management and control during preparation, processing, baking, cooling and storage is essential for the optimisation of product quality. This successful and highly practical volume describes in detail the role and control of water in the formation of cake batters, bread, pastry and biscuit doughs, their subsequent processing and the baked product. Now in a fully revised and updated second edition, (...) the book has been expanded and developed through the inclusion of new information and references related to the formation and processing of batters and dough into baked products. The new edition includes a selection of case studies based on practical experience in the manufacture and optimisation of baked products. Each case study, illustrated as appropriate, considers the various roles that water may play in different manufacturing contexts. The book is aimed at food scientists and technologists in bakery companies; ingredient suppliers; flour millers; researchers and students in academic food science departments. (shrink)

Lead (Pb) contamination of the environment is an important human health problem. Children are vulnerable to Pb toxicity; it causes damage to the central nervous system and, in some extreme cases, can cause death. Lead is widespread, especially in the urban environment, and is present in the atmosphere, soil, water and food. Pb tends to accumulate in surface soil because of its low solubility, mobility, and relative freedom from microbial degradation of this element in the soil. Lead is present (...) in soil as a result to weathering and other pedogenic processes acting on the soil parent material; or from pollution arising caused by the anthropogenic activities; such as mining, smelting and waste disposal; or through the adoption of the unsafe and unethical agricultural practices such as using of sewage sludge, and waste water in production of vegetable crops or cultivation of vegetables near highways and industry regions. Lead concentrations are generally higher in the leafy vegetables than the other vegetables. Factors affecting lead uptake included its concentration in the soil, soil pH, soil type, organic matter content, plant species, and unsafe agriculture practices. Generally, as Pb concentration increased; dry matter yields of roots, stems and leaves as well as total yield decreased. The mechanism of growth inhibition by lead involve: a decrease in number of dividing cells, a reduction on chlorophyll synthesis, induced water stress to plants, and decreased NO 3 - uptake, reduced nitrate and nitrite reductase activity, a direct effect of lead on protein synthesis, a decrease on the uptake and concentration of nutrients in plants. The strategies to minimize Pb hazard can be represented in: (a) Phytoremediation, through natural plants are able to bio-accumulate Pb in their above–ground parts, which are then harvested for removal such as, using Indian Mustard (Brassica juncea), Ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia), Hemp Dogbane (Apocynum cannabium), or Poplar trees, which sequester lead in its biomass. (b) Good and ethical agricultural practices such as cultivation of vegetables crops as far from busy streets or highways and industry regions as well as nonuse of sewage sludge and waste water in cultivated soils. (c) Increasing the absorptive capacity of the soil by adding organic matter and humic acid. (d) Growing vegetable crops and cultivars with a low potential to accumulate lead, especially in soils exposed to atmospheric pollution. (e) Washing of leafy vegetables by water containing 1 % vinegar or peeling roots, tubers, and some fruits of vegetables before consumption may be an important factor in reducing the lead concentration. (shrink)

If scientists rely on assumptions rather than logic, empirical confirmation, and falsification, they are no longer doing science but ideology – which is, by definition, unethical. As a recent US National Academy of Sciences report put it, “bad science is always unethical.”1 This article discusses several ways in which toxicologists can fall into ideology – bad, therefore unethical, science. In part because of the increasing expense of pollution control, some toxicologists have been reexamining pollution dose-response curves that (...) are non-monotonic, that is, curves in which the direction of some response changes with increasing or decreasing dose.2 Ethanol is a classic example of a non-monotonic dose-response curve because moderate drinking is associated with lower risks of heart disease, whereas heavy drinking is associated with higher risks.3,4 If some low-dose pollutants exhibit adaptive or “beneficial effects,”5 this might suggest re-thinking pollution regulations which presuppose linear no-threshold (LNT) dose-response curves. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Purity and Pollution: Resisting the Rehabilitation of a VirtueAmy Mullin“Purity” is a term used infrequently in contemporary academic literature. A survey of periodical indexes for the past ten years shows that references to purity occur predominantly in metallurgy. Purity is an increasingly important topic in anthropology, religious studies, and history, but it is a decidedly rare concern in philosophy. In my most recent search I found three references.Yet (...) “purity” was once a recurrent term in the philosophical tradition ranging from Plato through Augustine and Kant to Kierkegaard. Today when we encounter the many references to purity in the history of philosophy we too often filter them out. We assume either that “pure” is a generic term for good, or, in what seems a more knowing and sophisticated response, we read “pure” as a code term for chastity or sexual morality, the elimination, suppression or control of sexual desire. In both cases purity is written off either as a generic or as an old fashioned and rather embarrassing virtue. Hence it seems there is little reason for contemporary philosophical investigation into the rhetorical use of the language of purity and pollution.Three assumptions account for the lack of contemporary philosophical interest in the topic. First, it is assumed that purity is no longer a concern in twentieth-century philosophy. Second, purity in historical discourse is considered to be limited to a prudish or downright misogynist hostility to sex. Third and finally, it is assumed that the work historians and anthropologists have done recently into connections between purity beliefs and practices and social cohesion is irrelevant for philosophy. This is because purity in philosophy is supposed to be a resolutely individualist virtue, having little or nothing to do with unified and coherent communities.There are elements of truth to all three beliefs, but they also contain important distortions of the truth. As regards the first assumption, purity remains a concern in contemporary aesthetics, where it often means roughly something like a priori and apolitical; but I am interested in whether the concern with purity has survived in philosophies with ethical implications. [End Page 509] Here it is my contention that authenticity is the twentieth-century descendant of the virtue of purity.Second, there is much more to the rhetoric and practices of purity than concern with the sexual dimension of life, though this is a key aspect of most, and the beliefs and practices are often misogynist. There have been numerous anthropological documentations of ways in which purity beliefs, particularly an emphasis on sexual purity, are used to control women. Santi Rozario’s work, for instance, makes this point in her analysis of contemporary Bengali village life. 1 The connection between the language of purity and the practice of female circumcision, which I will not discuss in this paper, is in itself evidence enough of connections between purity beliefs and practices harmful to women. 2 However, I hope to show that there is more to purity than misogyny. Purity most basically is about order, both social and personal. 3My response to the second assumption, that purity masks an obsession with sexual control, indicates the source of my disagreement with the third, the contention that purity in philosophy is exclusively an individual virtue. Communal beliefs and practices associated with the language of purity and pollution are relevant to the philosophical treatment of purity because of the presence in both the practices and the philosophies of an interplay between social and personal order. As a result I believe an understanding of the dynamics of beliefs about purity in social practice can inform a philosophical concern with purity.First I investigate shifts in beliefs and practices concerning purity and pollution. I will concentrate on three models: ancient Greek (from the eighth to the third century BC), biblical to Talmudic Judaism (from the third century BC to the third century AD), and early Christian (from the first to the fifth century AD). These represent three traditions which have played a very significant role in shaping western civilization, theology, and philosophy. 4 They were also frequently interrelated in this period, as Christian and Jewish Platonists writing in Greek attest and of course as... (shrink)

Water has always played a significant role in religions. This contribution seeks to investigate comparatively the figure of the rainmaker as presented in Traditional African religions and biblical texts. The phenomenon of the rainmaker is at the centre of this investigation. In Traditional African religions, the rainmaker is not only a figure controlling rain but also has a substantial social standing. In biblical texts, the rainmaker (of which Samuel and Elijah can be considered as examples), functions more like a (...) prophet without an elite social and political status. Despite the differences in the status of the rainmaker among Traditional African religions and biblical texts, both traditions make it abundantly clear that rain originates with God. God sends or withholds the rain. The figure of the rainmaker as a social leader can today contribute to instilling a sense of using water responsibly and guiding communities in considering climate action to ensure sustainable living on land and water. A sense of concern over the responsible use of water will bind communities together. In this way, water can be a binding factor and stimulating topic-enhancing interreligious dialogue.Contribution: This contribution is a comparative study of the phenomenon of the rainmaker as presented in Traditional African religions and biblical texts. It aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, number 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation); number 13 (Climate Action) and number 15 (Life on Land). (shrink)